Term of the Day

Shovelware is a derogatory term used for software that has either been quickly developed without regard to quality or function and features, or software that has been forced on customers such as those that are preloaded on laptops or smartphones by their respective carriers.
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echnology

Since its origin, Mac has been an instrumental tool in
helping K-12 schools provide the right resources to
students and staff. As the must-have technology for
teachers and computer labs, Mac and its wealth of
available apps help ensure success in elementary schools
all the way through high school graduation.
Now, with more Mac computers making their way into
school environments than ever before, the need to
properly deploy, manage and secure Apple is at an
all-time high. This white paper examines how purpose-built
management solutions are essential to a successful Apple
strategy.

War is being waged for talent, and the spoils will go to those
organizations that arm their recruits with the technology that makes
them work more effectively and creatively. Technology is now the
primary way that organizations engage with their workforce. According
to a Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey of 677
executives, the overwhelming majority—86%—believe that technology
has a greater impact on employee engagement today than it did three
years ago, and a similar number say that technology will continue to be
a major factor in engaging the workforce in the years ahead.

The oil field is being dynamically transformed through the connective power of the Internet, the advancements in remote connected sensors, and the possibilities of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).
As the quest for hydrocarbons and alternative energy sources extends into deeper and harsher environments, operators, service companies, and asset owners are leveraging technology advancements to ensure their employees are safer, their fields are more productive, and their capital assets are operating at peak efficiency.

How we fuel our vehicles, heat our homes, and power our industries is undergoing fundamental change. Well-deployed but inefficient technologies, such as internal combustion engine cars and oil/gas boilers are being replaced with electrified and higher-efficiency alternatives. And renewables such as sunlight, wind, thermal, and others, supported by next generation battery storage, are fueling an evergreater share of energy demand.

Facing combined ratios exceeding 98% in both P&C and Health Insurance1 for
three of the past five years and declining investment yields, insurers are asking
“What can we change in our operations to improve our economics?” Conclusive
answers are now coming from Cognitive Technology, the variety of Artificial
Intelligence that deals with knowledge and textual information. Applied to the
industry’s most resource-intensive processes, it is delivering unprecedented
productivity gains and insight, and leading to deep changes in how P&C insurers
do business. Here’s how.

Adopting a PSA solution can help position small to mid-sized consulting firms for future growth by modernizing and futureproofing their underlying business processes in every area of operations and management.
Read this white paper by IDG to learn why having purpose-built technology can drive engagement, improve resource and business visibility, and put your growing firm on a path to success.

Having real-time access to engagement information via a cloud-based, integrated, information infrastructure is critical in delivering high-value, on time engagements that always delight clients. So why do so many consulting firms fail in this area, that they constantly advise clients on?
Enjoy a complimentary copy of ProjectManagement.com’s new white paper on how an effective information infrastructure will ensure client excellence. Author Andy Jordan, consulting firm owner and industry expert, reveals the 5 ways to exceed client expectations and how consulting firms can leverage technology to achieve client excellence.
Download the white paper today!

We know that digital transformation is changing the economics of IT, but is this influencing CXO dynamics and strategic decision-making? To determine this, the Financial Times (FT) Focus partnered with Apptio to survey more than 550 C-suite leaders in technology and finance globally.
Download this FT Focus report to discover how to:
- Bridge the trust gap and ease tensions between the Office of the CIO and the CFO with accountability and real-time data
- Leverage digital transformation to foster greater collaboration and avoid creating blurred responsibilities across the C-suite
- Help leaders at global brands embrace AI, reskilling, cloud, Agile, and decentralized decision-making to move at hyperspeed and deliver value.

Cloud migration is consistently one of the top priorities of technology leaders across the world today, but many are overwhelmed by trying to plan their cloud migration, struggling to prioritize workloads and unsure of the cost implications..
Download this white paper to discover the 5 key steps for cloud migration based on the best practices of today’s most successful IT leaders:
- Baseline TCO resources (cloud, on-premises, hybrid)
- Map current on-premises resources to cloud offerings
- Evaluate and prioritize migration strategy
- Calculate migration costs
- Define success metrics

Ready to communicate IT cost and value in terms your business unit partners understand?
The Apptio TBM Unified Model® (ATUM®) standardizes the financial information necessary for IT leaders to manage their technology business.
Use this poster as a resource to:
• Establish better alignment between IT, Finance, and other business units by using common language around IT costs
• Confidently manage the business of IT with the backing of peer-derived best practices
• Understand 10 essential metrics you should track to communicate the business value of IT

In this eBook, we walk you through the four ways to optimize your IT costs and offer up prescriptive questions to make your analysis crisp and your conclusions actionable.
Learn more about these four ways to optimize technology costs, including:
- Scrutinize to close financial loopholes
- Economize to eliminate waste
- Rationalize to avoid duplication
- Commercialize to curb demand

Get the poster that maps AWS, Azure, and GCP services to a standard IT taxonomy. The Apptio TBM Unified Model® (ATUM®) standardizes the financial information necessary for IT leaders to manage their technology business.
Download the Cloud Cost Management Poster for best practices to:
- Map AWS and Azure billing to a standard taxonomy
- Better understand cloud costs and usage to avoid surprises and drive accountability
- Optimize resources by taking action on underutilized and idle instances

Driven by the growth and maturation of cloud-based
technology, there is an alternative that can help smaller companies continue
to grow and remain competitive, and even compete with larger players. With
that, the perception of HR as a cost center is no longer the default view. In fact, this new technology wave is transforming HR teams into strategic business partners.

Aligning your workforce plan to greater business objectives doesn’t have to be a struggle—especially when you get the basics right. This whitepaper outlines the 10 fundamental steps for creating an effective strategic workforce plan and how technology can help put it into action.

Today’s organizations compete on customer experience
and this trend will define the shape and scope of contact
centers well into the next decade. To deliver the level of
seamless experiences that customers expect, contact
centers will need to harness all the advantages technology
can offer – specifically, the cloud – to create an “intelligent
cloud contact center” that utilizes machine learning and
real-time data analysis.
So, step one is to move your contact center to the cloud. ASAP.
Once you are operating a cloud contact center, the next step is to start leveraging everything this enables you to do. This is where the “Intelligent Cloud Contact Center” comes into play.”

By the time most customers reach a human employee with a question, chances are they have
already researched online or tried to self-serve. This means employee transformation is required
to develop more sophisticated employees in the age of automation to solve more advanced
customer issues.
Because front-line jobs are becoming more complex, employees need to be tactical, technical, and
ready to emotionally handle these new types of interactions.
Recently, Lamont Exeter, head of Learning & Development at TTEC Digital, teamed up with Tim
Duranleau of SAP Litmos in a webinar to discuss ways that companies can combine learning
and technology to create more sophisticated employees. Below are some key highlights from
the discussion.

Technology is critical to mission success. However, hostile physical environments and specialized use cases put more stringent demands on mobile devices being used by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corp (USMC). Robert Murphy describes the unique requirements for these programs.

Multinational companies (MNCs) are facing a unique combination of escalating customer, competitive and operational pressures which are forcing them to fundamentally change the way they do business and manage their IT infrastructures supporting network, security and mobility needs.
Lack of IT resources, limited capex and more complex global implementations are driving an increasing proportion of MNCs to offload, or 'out-task', various aspects of their day-to-day management responsibilities to skilled third-parties that can help perform these functions well.

Collaboration in the enterprise requires a triumvirate of people, process and technology to be successful. With the plethora of collaboration applications available today, both IT professionals and collaboration business users alike need to take a holistic approach to be successful with
collaboration. This paper lets you know about some of the common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

At a projected market of over $4B by 2010 (Goldman Sachs), virtualizationhas firmly established itself as one of the most importanttrends in Information Technology. Virtualization is expectedto have a broad influence on the way IT manages infrastructure.Major areas of impact include capital expenditure and ongoingcosts, application deployment, green computing, and storage.

While interest in Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence/ (ML/AI) has never been higher, the number of companies deploying it is only a subset, and successful implementations a smaller proportion still. The problem isn’t the technology; that part is working great. But the mere presence and provision of tools, algorithms, and frameworks aren’t enough. What’s missing is the attitude, appreciation, and approach necessary to drive adoption and working solutions.
To learn more, join us for this free 1-hour webinar from GigaOm Research. The webinar features GigaOm analyst Andrew Brust and panelists Jen Stirrup, Lillian Pierson, and special guest from Cloudera Fast Forward Labs, Alice Albrecht. Our panel members are seasoned veterans in the database and analytics consulting world, each with a track record of successful implementations. They’ll explain how to go beyond the fascination phase of new technology towards the battened down methodologies necessary to build bulletproof solutions th

Transformation Propelled By Digital Maturity:
Incumbent organizations (as opposed to digital natives) fall into 3 clusters determined by their progress along the digital transformation journey.
Watchers: Who regard technology as an efficiency enabler and are trying to build a foundation for digital transformation.
Explorers: Those who regard technology as enabler for select functions that directly impact CX.
Visionaries: Rather, place technology at the heart of their business models and culture.

In today's hyperconnected and digitized world, cybersecurity has become an important strategic imperative owing to the sophistication of cybercrime. Digital businesses require complex and distributed interactions among people, applications and data - on premise, off-premise, on mobile devices and in the cloud. The result is an increase in the attack surfaces that are hard to protect and defend. As the perimeter continues to diminish, visibility into the environment gets tougher. Operational Technology (OT) and the Internet of Things (IoT) massively expand the scope of security strategy and operations. When a massively distributed fleet of autonomous devices that can make decisions is combined, directly affecting the physical state of people and things, there is a considerable risk to manage. This issue is not limited to the chief information security officer (CISO) but needs the involvement and sponsorship of the leadership and the board.